name: Calabash
flavor_db_name_variants: calabash
source: foodb
status: draft
food_db_id: Calabash
id: 318
name_scientific: Lagenaria siceraria
description: Lagenaria siceraria (synonym Lagenaria vulgaris Ser. ), bottle gourd, opo squash or long melon is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. For this reason, the calabash is widely known as the bottle gourd. The fresh fruit has a light green smooth skin and a white flesh. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds. They come in a variety of shapes, they can be huge and rounded, or small and bottle shaped, or slim and more than a meter long. The calabash was one of the first cultivated plants in the world, grown not primarily for food, but for use as a water container. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Africa to Asia, Europe and the Americas in the course of human migration. It shares its common name with that of the calabash tree.
itis_id: 22386
wikipedia_id: Calabash
picture_file_name: 322.jpg
picture_content_type: image/jpeg
picture_file_size: 66898
picture_updated_at: 2012-04-20T09:41:07.000Z
legacy_id: 349
food_group: Gourds
food_subgroup: Gourds
food_type: Type 1
created_at: 2011-02-09T00:37:35.000Z
updated_at: 2019-05-14T18:04:23.000Z
creator_id: null
updater_id: null
export_to_afcdb: false
category: specific
ncbi_taxonomy_id: 3668
export_to_foodb: true
public_id: FOOD00318